Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has filed an application for impleadment in a plea challenging Section 4 of the Place of Worship (Special Provisions) Act 1991. The applicant Organisation has filed the application to oppose the challenge to Section 4 of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991.
A Muslim body has moved the Supreme Court seeking to oppose a plea filed by a Hindu organisation challenging a provision of a 1991 law that provides for maintaining “religious character” of holy structure, it existed on August 15, 1947, in a bid to open the litigation route to reclaim disputed religious sites other than the Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya.
Petitioner Mahasangh has challenged the validity of the Places of Worship Special Provisions Act, 1991, which says character of religious places at the time of Independence can’t be changed.The petition is being seen as an attempt to start a legal battle to reclaim disputed religious sites at Kashi, Mathura and some other places where disputed mosques stand.
The impleadment application filed through Advocate Ejaz Maqbool said “even issuance of notice in the… matter will create fear in the minds of the Muslim Community with regard to their places of worship, especially in the aftermath of the Ayodhya Dispute & will destroy secular fabric of the nation”.
Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind — which works for Islamic causes — urged the Supreme Court not to entertain the petition filed by Vishwa Bhadra Pujari Purohit Mahasangh, that said the impugned Act protected the “barbarous action of invader who had converted Hindu places of worship”.
The 1991 law also prohibits the conversion of any temple into a mosque and vice versa.
